Telefun or How I learned to let go of winter and love VOIP

January 28th, 2009 Chris

As many of you know, I have grown to despise all things winter: dark, cold, snowy, etc… And so Colleen and I escape to South Beach as a respite from the deep freeze here in Ottawa. That’s one of the great things about having a micro-business without a brick and mortar presence: we can literally work anywhere.

Typically though, being away from home brings angst that the business will suffer. One of the standard challenges is how to keep in touch with partners, customers, etc… without giving up a level of service and without paying Bell or Rogers too much money. As far as I’m concerned, we are routinely asked to bend over here in Canada when it comes phone services.

That’s why I was excited when one of our customers, Tim Welch from Talkswitch, introduced me to this magical little box that we’ve just finished installing. A magical little box that not only provides us the ability manage multiple lines, have voice mails, auto-attendants (press 1 to get closer to – yet never quite reach – a human being…), etc…, it also can help you stick it to the phone company.

 

The really cool thing that the Talkswitch box supports that makes this all possible is VOIP. Now – I remember travelling all over the place back when I worked for my former employer and using Skype. Pretty good but with the occasional line drop, poor quality, etc… Not particularly conducive for trying to close a deal. We tried to use it last year when we were down South and it was definitely hit or miss (mostly miss).

When Tim told me about their VOIP support, I was thinking it would be the same as Skype. Well – it’s very different. I turn my computer into a phone – like Skype – but instead of connecting to the big cloud of competing-for-bandwidth-calls-from-every-corner-of-the-earth, the Talkswitch box is our own dedicated VOIP hub. In other words, I can pick up my “phone” from my computer anywhere in the world and I’m hooked up to the box in our office. From there, I can call other extensions or call out – just like I was in the office.

And the same applies for inbound. Someone dials my extension and it automatically rings at my local computer (before going to my normal voice mail or being forward to my cell – however I configure it).

And best of all – the quality is great (usually better than normal phone lines). And we save a ton on long distance charges. And we get all the stuff we’d get from a normal small business PBX (which of course you need anyways if you have more than one or two employees and a fax line).

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So, if you have the flexibility to go somewhere more fun or warm in your micro-biz, take it! There are tools there that can help you continue to work seamlessly and don’t have to be expensive!

C.

Posted in Telecom | 1 Comment »

I’m Back and Interactive

January 22nd, 2009 Chris

After a long holiday break I’m back. And my New Year’s resolution is to be committed and regular on the blog. Not a great start give it’s the 22nd…

Anyways…

Last fall, Colleen and I heard a guy speak at a conference. His name eludes me but what he said didn’t. He started a very successful on-line dating site and his advice was to focus your efforts on getting people who visit your web site to interact with you personally as quickly as possible.

That stuck with me and just a few days later, I saw a talk about Live Chat. It was a shameless sales pitch, but I couldn’t help but think that there would be a lot of value in proactively asking visitors to your web site if they are finding everything they need.

In case you’ve not experienced it, live chat is like instant messaging, but for the web. You can chat back and forth with an operator in a browser window. It can be initiated by the site visitor or by the operator.

I couldn’t help but think about the analogy of a retail store. Would you have a brick and mortar store without any sales clerks. No one to help shoppers find what they need or answer any questions? That would be insane.

So we bit the bullet and have now implemented live chat on the engageselling.com site. And the results have been great. We had such a reaction in the first couple of weeks that I had to go in and limit the number of simultaneous chats as Casey (in our office) was going insane trying juggle five conversations at once.

And one of the features we really like is that if you stay on a given web page for a certain amount of time (ex. 2 minutes), you are automatically prompted to see if you have any questions. Just like in a real shop!

We’ve even made sales with the chat.

Long and short, we’re going to be doing several things to make our on-line presence more engaging and more interactive – so we can quickly move from a prospect only browsing to a potential client interacting with us personally.

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OK, while I’m talking about live chat, I must share my frustration with some of the vendors servicing the entrepreneurial market. The gentlemen I mentioned above who was pitching his live chat solution was charging $3K plus $80 a month. It came with scripts and set up instructions along with the on-going chat service (the actual back end is hosted in most solutions). Long story short, he got everyone riled up, because live chat makes sense, and made a bunch of sales.

I tend to not make impulse purchases when it comes to the business (or in our personal life according to Colleen) and so while she was half way to the stage with her credit card in hand, I said Whoa. Instead, I did some reseach over two evenings and found that what the gentlemen was selling at the event did have industry leading features but he was reselling someone else’s service.

I found and contacted the service directly (god bless google) and got the exact same service for no money upfront (vs. $3K) and $79 per month.

The moral: always shop around… (the way I figure it, Colleen owes me $3K)

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C.

Posted in Marketing, Web, Web Site | 1 Comment »